pstoica

I'm a former software engineer at Puzzle Financial (Oct 2020 - May 2023; puzzle.io). Until today, Sasha Orloff has not acknowledged me publicly, relying on silence and whistleblower retaliation via Orrick.

Last night, Thanksgiving eve, he broke that silence on Wikipedia Help Desk, referring to me as "this user Patrick Stoica," calling federal CFPB documents and lawsuits "made up" and making surgical edits to hide that LendUp's lifetime lending ban covers him personally.

https://patrickstoica.com/puzzle-statement/#wikipedia-edit-w...

I've filed 5 SEC complaints, a California State Bar complaint (Case No. 25-O-30894), and a California Board of Accountancy complaint (Case No. A-2026-1047).

LendUp is a YC12 company. Puzzle received investments from a "YC Alum Syndicate" and has an active partnership onboarding YC companies. I've given YC advanced warning of Sasha's continued fraudulent conduct. They've chosen silence and censorship.

Any actions taken regarding this post will be similarly logged. They have already been notified; documentation is already in the SEC's hands.

https://patrickstoica.com/puzzle-statement/

It was before. They didn't acknowledge it and put the RTO in effect. (Second-hand account.)

The strange LendUp (W12) story continues into this year with changes in LendUp.com/FirstBoulevard.com's ownership, Greenwood's acquisition of Kinly (First Boulevard), and a series of layoffs at Mission Lane, which was created to purchase LendUp's credit card operations.

preach. it feels like it's only getting worse no matter the size of the company. people fundamentally don't understand creativity.

Can we talk about why Capital One cofounder Nigel Morris is using his VC firm QED Investors to back “socially responsible” financial products?

Can we talk about why Capital One cofounder Nigel Morris is using his VC firm QED Investors to back a "socially responsible" credit card?

Why is the fintech mogul and Capital One cofounder Nigel Morris running a "social good" credit card that can't even record payments on time? Why does Credit Karma aggressively endorse them? Just another day in America.

All this started in YC12 with LendUp and Sasha Orloff. Anu Shultes, Shane Holdaway, QED Investors, Frank Rotman (@fintechjunkie), and Puzzle Financial are all involved.

Check out https://mailing.run. Similar project that can be embedded or run as a standalone API. Also uses MJML which is indispensable for cross-client compatibility.

Another tip, I highly recommend a CSS minifier which inlines styles to fix a variety of CSS priority issues.

Decent salary, but that's not the point. I'm distraught to realize I spent 5 months on nothing, and it's not something I'm proud to have or explain on my CV. It's cruel how much money these people throw away, but we were misled into thinking it was real. I wouldn't have taken this position to support such a scumbag.

Hell no, a $400 million valuation made no sense, but he kept feeding us these lies.

The SEC tried investigating since December 2019, possibly earlier. Again, public information.

We can't fathom it either!

Anyway folx, don't invest in a "hot startup" you've never heard of.

I was someone at the bottom of the totem pole who tried to do my job and ask what questions I could. I certainly noticed a lack of analytics or basic traffic/revenue/customer data. Retroactively, it was obvious that this was essentially a fake job, but I couldn't piece this together and there wasn't enough company-wide transparency.

The fake financial statements were publicly released: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1317641...

This is simply not the case. Adam lied to everyone's face for years. Read the documents and financial statements if you think this is just a little "flex" every couple of slides.

I didn't have all the information that's coming out now. People tried. Read the article. The last investment was finalized days after someone raised concerns after realizing we didn't contact 70% of our customers.

Ex-employee here. Adam Rogas is a pathological liar and sociopath who dragged this out for years. I don't know how multiple audits failed to raise red flags over multiple $999,999.99 fake Stripe payouts. He literally inserted millions every few lines that didn't match up with the data around it. They never asked anyone else to produce the same report. Everyone involved should never be responsible for this amount of money again (looking at you, Lightspeed).

If your CEO is actively siloing all financial and customer information, your entire company needs to speak up and get on the same page. Don't let this happen to you.